Vigilance – Its a Practice

November 3, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off 

Vigilance: the “V” in DRIVE

One of the 5 elements of the RedShift DRIVE Self-Awareness and Change Leadership Model, and key to shifting identity, in the mindful/practical dimension is Vigilance.
dead-end
A while back I talked with 2 women who worked, under incompetent managers in a toxic culture, for the same very large and continually reorganizing financial firm. Both hated their jobs, but although their perspectives on the day to day experience were similar, their feelings were different. One woman was seriously depressed, stressed, anxious and negative. The other was cheerful and easygoing. Those respective feelings reflected how each of them responded to her work situation based on what she believed about her work situation.

One identified with “My job is killing me.” and the other with “I can still find ways to be valuable and feel good about what I do in a rapidly deteriorating work environment.”

Mainstream advice is typically about taking action and changing the external. Get out of there and get another job. That may work out fine but in the example, the woman who believed that her job was killing her would likely find herself repeatedly at the mercy of intolerable workplace conditions because she’s not practiced in realizing that her beliefs shape the experiences that result in her misery, stress and suffering.

Cultivating vigilance chops isn’t difficult when there’s willingness to accept personal and cultural creative power and to have faith that what results is always right, even if its unexpected, not understood or maybe even unpleasant. Its not about putting on a cheerful face when what you’re really feeling is rage at the moron you work for and then responding by spending the rest of the day bad-mouthing the jerk. That’s the kind of response that leads to the dead end that completely inhibits individual, cultural and organizational growth and development.

You develop the vigilance habit through non-resistance to life (including work) experience, wanted and unwanted, moment to moment. When you’re open to it, you receive the incoming feedback you need about going the right way and avoiding dead ends. When you’re open to it your outgoing self-expression is naturally influential and non-toxic, even when it challenges the status quo.

How and when do you start? In any moment in which you want to feel less bad. Allow yourself to be still. Remind yourself that this moment is your point of power. Breathe in the incoming and breathe out the outgoing. Notice the inner shift. Smile, thank yourself and continue on your way.

Filed under: Belief, Natural influence, direction, expansion, presence, self-expression, shift
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Compared to What?

June 3, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off 

Someone I’m close to who’d been upset about her 401k losses, said she’s now feeling a lot better about it. The reason: everyone else has lost the same percentage, so its relative.

Its an interesting exercise to notice how much of our thinking is relative. By relative I mean judging and responding to the events in our personal and business lives in comparison to others’ lives, or in comparison to our own lives, as we remember or anticipate them. This occurs so frequently that its considered natural. But when you challenge it in yourself, and in your organization and culture, you become aware of the negative results that follow:

  • scarcity – more for you means less for me
  • exclusiveness – keeping you / them out
  • superiority / inferiority
  • withholding / protectiveness

Transformational change takes place at least partially in the absolute, where no boundaries exist between or among us. Social business models and tools provide a great staging area for personal and organizational transformation but only if there’s willingness to be conscious of, and to act upon what’s true for and in us all.

Filed under: Consciousness, change leadership, expansion, inclusion, integral, shift
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Space

May 20, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off 

Creativity and Natural Influence

We’re made up of more space (dark energy and dark matter) than visible form and matter, but we spend most of our lives totally identified with the latter. Its one thing to think about the concept of spaciousness but yet another to experience it, for even a short period of time. Anyway, why would we want to and how do we do that?

We want to because we now know that the physical and conceptual structures that we’re identified with are unstable and will be replaced with new ones that are yet to be created. We want to be part of that. But fear and worry about that instability, and how it will affect our lives and businesses, lead to more attachment and rigidity that then shows up in how we respond to change: protection, judgment, guilt, resentment, complaining, blame, etc.

So instead of a desired growth direction we get stuck on the survival path. Life and business experience becomes relentless reactivity to an endless series of crises and lack . We know that the way towards new and better experience is through creativity and innovation, but forget that creativity comes through us. Its not something we can reach out and attain. Rather, we have to make space for it and knock down the walls that block it.

Making space for creativity in challenging times requires vigilance over individual and collective thought and action. Space is created by ceasing thinking and constant doing, and by softening the physical and conceptual boundaries constructed in attempt to keep out everything not wanted, like vulnerability. It can be as simple as taking deep breaths and setting time aside for short periods of stillness. It can also be more challenging and require a lot of courage, putting oneself on the line without a safety net for one’s convictions, so to speak.

The challenges we’re dealing with now are opportunities for dropping resistance and defenses to receive the wave of creative energy that is always available. It comes through us when we let it. It takes faith. The biblical metaphor for our self-constructed creativity barrier is the Wall of Jericho. When we blast ours down, we’re then freed to enter our Promise Land. That’s the metaphor for the place and point of power from where we can expand our natural influence, and contribute the best of who we are to what is yet to be created.

Filed under: Cognition, Consciousness, Creativity, Metaphysics, Natural influence, creative habit, direction, expansion, innovation, intention, metaphor, mind mapping, presence, shift, wave
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Communications Leadership in Challenging Situations

January 15, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment 

slam_door
Times of increased stress and anxiety provide a great staging area for self-aware communication. Although Its increasingly important to nurture relationships, create natural influence and expand social capital, anxiety and stress means more conflicts, misunderstandings and more chances to turn people off.

Its not always the result of a big argument or conflict. Turn-off can be the cumulative result of, subtle, one-word put-downs (“whatever” and “obviously” come to mind), or interrupting and cutting off others.

The effect is to verbally slam the door on people who quickly back off from, or avoid you. The consequent feelings of rejection and insecurity increase fear and accelerate the cycle through which what is expressed constantly contradicts what is desired: that is, connection, acknowledgment, appreciation and understanding.

When mindfulness is neglected in personal and professional conversations and interactions, social equity can quickly slide into a negative balance state. The overdraft, and the unconscious communication habit, can be cured.

There’s a lot of emphasis placed on increasing social IQ in order to better pick up on the subtle cues people exhibit when they negatively respond to you. These are good intuitive skills to learn, but paradoxically, the negative response is often exactly the thing that’s unconsciously desired.

There’s a hidden payoff when words result in the other person feeling threatened, unfairly accused, rejected, discounted, marginalized or drained. The jolt of satisfaction gotten from lashing out or sniping is powerful, and feeds the ego’s need to be right, and superior. But it doesn’t last. What lasts, is Klesha, described in Sanskrit as trap of suffering that can be eradicated only through awareness.

Conscious communication results from practicing a different response in challenging situations. This is done by noticing how the mind races to assumptions and judgments, and how strong negative feelings follow those thoughts. Stopping the mind, and giving the fearful or angry emotion some space, can be done in a matter of seconds. The technique’s effectiveness is increased with slow deep breathing.

Gradually, a shift occurs in which you realize that what you thought you so desperately needed from others, was within your power to give yourself, all along. Interactions and conversations will then initiate from a point of power, not need, and a place of giving, not getting.

Making this shift means fully living up to, and modeling, communication and service leadership.

Filed under: alignment, change leadership, communcation, expansion, leadership, relationship, self-awareness, social capital, stress relief
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Social Networks Part 4: Quantitative ROI

October 6, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment 

RedShift Social Media-Network Model for Business

RedShift Social Media-Network Model for Business

Businesses across all industries are paying more attention to social networks which are predicted to explode worldwide. Although clearly there’s tremendous opportunity and potential it can be overwhelming to grasp the rapid disruption happening and the voluminous information getting pushed out.

Decision makers need help discerning what’s valuable from what’s hype and in taking a direction that makes sense for them. My goal is to help them do that with a unique 4-stage map that is more strategy than tactics and more visual than wordy.

My posts on stages 1-3 are:

The purpose integral to my model is that businesses of all size increase their natural natural influence by using social networks to expand their social capital, brand awareness and sense response skills and abilities.

The quantifiable return in my model is the sum of actionable metrics that follow the qualitative experiential learning of the earlier phase. Its nearly impossible to assign a dollar figure to every social media action. Its more reasonable to present ROI as a story of the benefits of your social media initiative. What’s most important in the very organic world of social networks, is patiently directing the movement, or progression from one stage to the next and not losing commitment to authentic community relationship-building in the quest for ROI.

I developed this model to support a practical approach to social media with recommendations including:

  • Determine if and how social networks can help you grow your business and/or improve profitability.

  • Accept the disruption resulting from a shift from seller to buyer power.

  • Involve people in the decision making process who will challenge assumptions and habitual responses to change and disruption.

  • Understand that it will take two years to measure returns on integrating social networks, whether external, internal (behind the firewall), or both.

  • Model natural and authentic communications both offline and online and give incentives for participation.

  • Don’t wait, over-plan, over-control, micro-manage or over-analyze. Adopt a test and learn approach to social networks.

  • Be open-minded and creative about results and metrics you choose to track, knowing that you could get an unexpected equivalent result, or something even better.

  • If the above don’t convince you, consider the cost to your business of doing nothing.

Filed under: authenticity, culture, direction, disruption, emergence, enterprise initiatives, expansion, global microbrand, integral, micro-business, networks, personal brand, relationship, social capital, social media, social networks, tribal wisdom
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Social Networks Part 1: Community Segmentation

September 19, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment 

I developed a knowledge zone framework for providing qualitative research products to high growth technology and media companies. It was a valuable approach because it helped clients identify change before it happened. The content they got helped them respond to sudden shifts and threats as well as to imagine future scenarios.

RedShift: Social Network Community Segmentation

RedShift: Social Network Community Segmentation

I’m building upon that framework to help businesses interested in how they’ll integrate social networks into their existing business and marketing strategies and initiatives. These firms are also trying to understand exactly how they will create natural influence with their social network communities through conversation, dialog and collaboration.

In the past it was clear-cut:

  • Get an offer in front of buyers who know what they want and who are ready to buy.
  • Push special offers to buyers who are unsure.
  • Push ads on everyone else, measure response rates, refine.

The temptation of course is to carry over some form of that old approach to social networking. But that will not only fail, it will alienate the community, which can include internal customers (employees) as well as channel partners. As markets move to absolute buyer power, sellers must be attuned to what underlies “latent” need or desire and find ways to communicate and “meet” these different community segments where they are.

Natural influence isn’t selling or advertising. Its exchanging yourself (the seller) with community members at different stages of knowledge, need and desire. Its subtle, indirect and 100% honest and authentic. Since it requires a shift in mindset, an online communication learning curve, and possibly new business models and back-end systems, many will find the change too daunting. If that’s the case, think about the opportunity cost of doing nothing and experiment on a small scale. But do so with commitment and immediacy.

Filed under: authenticity, communcation, expansion, intention, social capital, social networks
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